Now imagine that these games had a massively multiplayer component. The same game, but with the floodgates open for thousands of players at the same time, with NO other changes made to the game. The multiplayer versions of the above games are, in your view:

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This is rather silly .First you group GTA together with TES/FO3. Gta is action game with no persistent content. everything within x meters from player simply does not exist

2nd if those games (now meaning FO3/TES) would be made MMOs there are many many ifs. First Bethesda games ARE persistent – you clear dungeon it stays cleared and so on. You complete major quests landscape and/or NPCs change

GTA would be better candidate for MMO but precisely because its theme park. Its not persistent in any way

Anyways GTA is ready to be MMOized.Bethesda games are not.

And to make sandboxes out of them you would have to make so many changes that neither of them would be recognizable

Hi Max! First I have a few questions, because you seem to be making a couple of assumptions and I want to prod at why:

What does GTA’s not having persistent content have to do with anything? What definition of “sandbox” are you working from that makes that fact relevant? (Do you equate the terms?) Why do you consider GTA to be a themepark?

Second, you don’t seem to include the “ifs” you referenced. Perhaps you can clarify? And you say:

And to make sandboxes out of them you would have to make so many changes that neither of them would be recognizable

Why is that? What definition of “sandbox” are you operating from to make this the case?

Further, did you consider FO3/TES to be sandboxes when in their single-player incarnation? Why or why not? You describe them as “persistent” but that is not the question unless you equate the two terms.

So, is the determining factor for making Elder Scrolls a sandbox MMO in your eyes mostly a matter of content quantity? If the content in TES series remains the same in the multiplayer transition, why does this seem like less content when you add a few thousand players (it does to me, too, vaguely at least)? Wouldn’t the cost be the same, then, though, from a dev standpoint?

I have a friend I’ve known for roughly 4 decades (since we were both serving in the USN) and I trust his opinion and descriptions of games without question… he described Skyrim as a, “Sandbox, single-player, rpg” and went on to describe the “wide open exploration” and extremely “non-linear pathing through the quests and main storyline” as well as the very flexible and creative character development which also included things like the ability to purchase in-game housing as well as the skill choices.

My friend has strongly encouraged me to purchase the game right away, since I’m very much an “explorer” type and will no doubt deeply appreaciate all that Skyrim has to offer. (Unfortunately, the answer is a solid “no” until roughly a year from now… I have far too much experience with Bethesda as a developer to ever trust that one of their products is ready for play on the date of release… I will wait until at least the worst of the bugs have been squashed and by doing so I’ll also benefit from a reduced price as well.)

From all accounts Skyrim takes full advantage of the fact that it’s a single-player game, and while certain elements of it would be welcome components in an MMO style game, the unfortunate fact is, much of it’s gameplay would create considerable problems in a MMO setting and unresolvable player conflict is just one of those.

There is a good reason why MMOs haven’t not killed off “lesser” forms of games already… there are facets of gaming experience they simply cannot deliver on because they have to take care to preserve the playing experience for all of their players.

Ask yourself this; how much would you have enjoyed Skyrim if two thousand other players had already gone through that gaming environment before you got a chance to? Think of all the changes YOU made to the world during your play through, and multiply that by a ridiculous number of folks who do NOT share your sensibilities and preferences.
Consider your favorite NPC from Skyrim… the one you enjoyed the most for whatever reason… now consider that you never met them because they annoyed me and I killed them with my extremely “darkside” dark brotherhood character before you got a chance to get to that area of the game…

I know it’s tempting to compare single-player rpgs and MMO (supposed to be rpgs) but they are quite simply Apples and Oranges.

I’ve thought about the scenarios you pose and I am in fact trying to get a feel for what people would consider the “sweet spot”.

There are already unkillable NPCs in Skyrim, yet it’s still considered a sandbox. So, how many NPCs would have to be unkillable before someone like your friend felt restricted enough to rescind that title? What if it were a few more on top of that, just to allow a greater amount of freedom for a larger amount of people in the world? Even dungeons and ruins have bandits move in after a time after the player has cleared them; does speeding up that time automatically relegate the multiplayer version to a themepark?

I am just musing here, of course. More when I have another moment to spare.

Oh yes, the other thing I wanted to touch on is the NPC AI, which most people seem to think is pretty good (not perfect; we have all observed failings) in games like Skyrim, yet we lack the trust in devs to hold to that same level of quality when creating NPCs in MMOs. Rather, in my view, we have given up on demanding it (or did we ever?) in lieu of player content. What I say to that is, why let devs off the hook when we know what they’re capable of in a single-player game? Themepark is no excuse, indeed.

The second poll is actually very difficult to answer if only for the reason that GTA (while I consider it to be sandbox-like because you can do anything you want at any time) is almost exactly like every MMO on the market.

In GTA you can go where you want when you want, but you will not progress the story by doing these things. The same holds true for WoW and Lotro and SWTOR etc; you can go wherever you want but you won’t be able to progress without doing the “story” line.

Elder Scrolls on the other hand, really has no story. By that I mean that the story is you and what you do. It’s not written ahead of time for you to complete. There is an inkling of some backstory and lore, but you never have to get around to it if you don’t want to. Fallout, especially 3, is sort of in between.

In short, I can’t really answer the poll because they are too different. And the word “themepark” is too loaded and abused to be an accurate descriptor. We really need a scale of Sandbox where Minecraft is a 10, Elder Scrolls is a 9, GTA is a 5, WoW is a 4 and Dragon Nest is a 0.

(Disclaimer: Those numbers are made up on the spot and not the result of hours of toil.)

Hi Cuth, I am somewhat inclined to agree with you and have also mentioned elsewhere that I think of sandbox vs. themepark as more of a continuum than a binary either/or. (I also think the term “sandbox” is very loaded and am trying to get people to unpack their assumptions, either way)

But more to the point, you simultaneously consider GTA to be sandbox-like, but think it is more like what are considered themepark MMOs. This echoes the sentiments of a previous commenter and I think it’s an interesting starting point for those who view this as a binary: why is GTA sandbox-like, but WoW a quintessential themepark? Etc.

Yeah, that sounds a little bit contradictory. But I consider GTA to be sandbox-like simply because your character can progress without actually participating in the story line. And there’s a whole lot to do apart from it. You can acquire the best weapons and cars without ever seeing a cutscene.

I compare GTA to WoW because I think they are similar in that aspect.

In truth, I don’t consider WoW to be the quintessential theme park. Earlier I gave it a 5 right in the middle. I see two main points that cause some people to label WoW as a theme park.

1. Almost everyone participates in quests, dungeons, and the storyline because they are so accessible and honestly, good. (Yes quests get old but the first time you do them they are fun.)
2. Blizzard has made progression too slow outside of the main track. Can you level through PvP or exploring or grinding while crafting? Yes, but it will take forever. You could walk to California, but the train is much faster and more fun.

And a minor point.
3. People like to hate on the empire, even if it is exaggerated.

I couldn’t even manage your first poll, sorry. GTA threw me off completely as I can’t classify it as an RPG – that implies levels and linear progression and possibly skills/talents/powers or similar variations thereof to me. It can be played as an immersive open world style of sandbox, but it strikes me more as a blend of shooter and toybox with some quests. ‘shooter’ implies improvement if not progress through accumulating better weapons/armour/equipment via some currency or other, and toybox because one is often encouraged to rampage wildly through it, and do whatever chaotic thing one feels like doing at the time, with little resulting consequences from one’s choice of action.

The Elder Scrolls games have toybox elements, but are also strongly an immersive world sandbox (do what you like within the confines of the world) and an RPG.

Fallout 1 and 2 were RPGs with a tactical turn-based bent, that were starting to build that sense of an immersive world through lore and sandbox choices (branching options to roleplay helping, hindering or ignoring) and story elements. Fallout 3 was an offspring of Elder Scrolls and the prior Fallouts and blend the above, losing more of the tactical turn-based aspects.

Surprisingly or not, I think a GTA style MMO has the best chance of making it while preserving most of the elements of the singleplayer. The storyline and side quests can be instanced or phased for individual players, and the semblance of an open world playground created via environment design and simple NPC reactions, while the players can be let loose to do whatever the heck they like (in PvE or PvP demarcated zones) that will simply reset and heal the wounds/scars in the landscape made by the playerbase.

Singleplayer RPGs are primarily about one of three things: an immersive world where you are the central figure, a storyline that branches in narrative based on your choices, and the ability to customise/self-express through choices of looks, skills/classes, quest/story decision points. Oh, maybe a fourth thing: tactical optimisation of builds or combat via min-maxing exercises.

Some of that can and has been translated to an MMO setting, but I think the big stumbling blocks are immersiveness / persistence of world and central importance of player and their choices. The moment you run into other Real People who Don’t Play Like You, the above factors start to get compromised and fudged to some extent.

You could do like Eve and let only a few people be the prime movers and shakers, but then the ordinary Joes may start to lose interest. And the immersiveness of Eve really depends on what you put into it. It sure has persistence of world and consequences of player actions as a strong core, though.

Or you could compromise on persistence of world by not letting player actions have any or much lasting consequence. Or make everyone the central character in their own phased drama (cue everyone walking around with the same quest rewards and ‘unique’ title).

There’s probably more stopgap solutions. Never quite the same as singleplayer though.

Fair enough. Funnily, I included GTA in my poll because I figured that if I didn’t, someone would chime in that I had neglected to consider it, and yet its inclusion has drawn the most objection! Still, I think it’s valuable to get people’s thoughts on why they don’t consider it part of the same milieu as TES/Fallout series, so I appreciate your taking the time to comment and explain your thought process.

I would say I generally agree with your thoughts on single-player vs. what can be translated to an MMO setting in your fifth paragragh, although Bioware’s SPRPGs fit under the definition you give, too, so would you consider an MMO that “compromises on persistence of world by not letting player actions have any or much lasting consequences” to be much of a sandbox? Or how much of a sandbox would it be? Would it necessarily be a themepark by virtue of curbing the impact of player actions at all? 20% of player actions? 45%?

I’ve had more fun “role playing” in SRTT recently than I have in an MMO since 2008 so yeah, I definitely consider GTA-type games as RPGs. Morrowind was absolutely an RPG for me, the different characters I made developed totally separate personalities and styles. I found myself going one way or another simply because that’s what my character would do.

Co-op SRTT even moreso. Me and my co-op buddy have been re-imagining our characters all sorts of run ways as we mess around. If it was thrown open to worldwide access then I think the charm would fall away, but a few friends doing it together is a lot more fun than I can can recall any MMO being recently and a lot of it has to do with how much you can customize your character and do anything you want.